Congress

While Democrats around the country try to “process” what happened last week, wily Chuck Schumer is planning what will happen next year. The soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader announced that, unlike Republicans during the Obama years, the Democrats won’t reflexively oppose whatever the president proposes. Instead, they will consider each proposal on its merits and work with President Trump when they consider his proposals meritorious. Schumer isn’t just saying this to »

Go home, that’s what it should do. I agree with Rick Manning of Americans for Limited Government. He advises: The single most important decisions for Congress in the lame duck session are to get in and get out, and do a short term continuing resolution that will allow the new Trump administration and Republican majorities in Congress to assert their spending priorities this coming spring. No criminal justice reform. No »

I wouldn’t call the following statement an iron rule, but it’s a good rule of thumb: When congressional Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly agree on legislation, the legislation is probably bad. That’s the case, in my view, with the bipartisan legislation that enables 9/11 victims and their families to sue the government of Saudi Arabia. Nowadays, “bipartisan” often means that one party supported a bill unanimously and managed to pick up »

Last week, I asked whether Republican leaders will rubber stamp President Obama’s internet giveaway. My fear was that they would end up backing a continuing resolution that does not include language blocking the transition away from U.S. oversight of the Internet’s domain name system. Without that language, the Obama administration will hand oversight of the domain name system to an international organization. This would create a danger that countries like »

Congress is ironing out another of its continuing resolutions. Conservatives led by Ted Cruz are insisting that the resolution include language that would block the transition away from U.S. oversight of the Internet’s domain name system. Donald Trump has backed Cruz in this fight. Why is ongoing U.S. oversight so important? Because, as Rick Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, says: Continuing U.S. oversight of the Internet’s domain name »

No sooner are the pixels posted on my note yesterday regarding “midnight regulations” than The Hill reports this: GOP Mostly Powerless in Stopping Obama ‘Midnight’ Regulations . . . Republican lawmakers and independent experts expect more [regulations] to come. But Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas told Roll Call that his party cannot do much because “the framers of the Constitution didn’t give us a lot of tools that didn’t »

Perhaps the most significant news from the FBI’s pre-Labor Day document release was the revelation that Team Clinton began wiping Hillary’s server shortly after the New York Times broke the story that she had one. As I noted here, the Times revealed in early March that Clinton used a private email server. The wiping occurred later that month. There’s more to the story, though. Almost immediately after the Times’ report »

John Fund reports that congressional Republicans increased the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights with a very generous budget increase last year. Fund takes up the matter in the NR column “How Republicans feed the beast of political correctness.” OCR is perhaps the most left-wing office in the federal bureaucracy. Bankrolling it that way Congress did was an egregious error (for which they were rewarded with the transgender guidance). »

I’m winding up my week at the Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa tomorrow and I’m not looking forward to leaving. It’s located at the Trump National Doral Miami. The weather has been accommodating. I’ve learned a lot. Indeed, I think I’ve become a true believer in the gospel according to Pritikin. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, going back to the days when the program was based »

The bipartisan jailbreak legislation — known as the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act — is dead in this session of Congress. Sens. Dick Durbin and John Cornyn, key backers of the Act, have basically conceded defeat. Cornyn said he had hoped the House would move more quickly and provide momentum for the legislation in the Senate. But, he added, “apparently we ran out of time.” In reality, the demise of »

The Supreme Court’s 4-4 decision in the executive amnesty case means that the lower court’s ruling invalidating that amnesty is affirmed. Executive amnesty will not be granted while Obama is president. What happens after that? If Donald Trump is elected, presumably there will be no mass amnesty. Trump is unpredictable, but probably not unpredictable enough to do amnesty. In the more likely event that Hillary Clinton is elected, matters will »

The House Select Committee on Benghazi has issued its report. The 800-page document is the result of an investigation that, according to the committee, encompassed 81 new witnesses and 75,000 pages of new documents. The report covers every aspect of the Benghazi scandal — the “before,” the “during,” and multiple phases of the “after.” At Hot Air, Larry O’Connor provides a good summary and Ed Morrissey homes in on the »

Earlier this month, Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker issued a statement praising a determination by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) that paves the way for completing the privatization of the Internet’s domain name system. Such privatization seems like a highly questionable move as a matter of policy, but the overriding issue here isn’t internet governance; rather it is Article I of the Constitution. Here’s why. NTIA, located within »

A political shakeup is occurring in my neck of the woods. Our congressman, leftist Chris Van Hollen, is running for the Maryland Senate seat that Barbara Mikulski will vacate. He’s opposed by radical leftist Donna Edwards. Rep. Edwards, an African-American, has a reputation for poor constituent services. Her predecessor Albert Wynn was no star in this department. My daughter, who interned for Rep. Connie Morella, tells me that Wynn’s constituents »

Adam Kredo of the Washington Free Beacon reports that Congress is investigating whether the Obama administration misled lawmakers last summer about the extent of concessions granted to Iran under the nuclear deal. It is also looking into whether administration officials have been quietly rewriting the deal’s terms. The investigation stems from statements by top administration officials last week suggesting that Iran is set to receive weapons and sanctions relief the »

Today the House of Representatives passed a bill that would repeal Obamacare and defund Planned Parenthood. This is the same bill that passed the Senate last month on a 52-47, with the Republicans avoiding a filibuster with the same reconciliation process that enabled passage of Obamacare in the first place. The vote in the House was 240-181, nearly along party lines. So for the first time, President Obama will be »

At NR’s Corner, Elliott Abrams gives his take on the report that the Obama administration spied on the Israeli government. Abrams served for many years as a U.S. foreign policy official and is, of course, a leading pro-Israel advocate. Thus, his is a voice I wanted to hear on this potential scandal. Abrams believes there should be a strong presumption against spying on allies. He also believes that we should »